P Kharel

A year in office this week on January 20, the United States President Joe Biden is keen to improve his public standing as an effective leader, even as public opinion surveys and analysts indicate that neither he nor Vice President Kamala Harris is any big asset for the 2024 race for the nation’s top job. Such sobering facts have shaken up the Republican Party, notwithstanding having its man at the White House after a gap of 12 years.

The oldest president at 78 when he entered the White House in 2021, Biden has not been able to seize the existing conditions by taking initiatives that deliver and earn impressive public approval ratings. The manner in which the Democrats denigrated the defeated predecessor single-term President Donald Trump might have jacked up expectations from the elderly leader who was in the Senate for 36 years starting from 1973 and served as vice president under Barack Obama.

As expected
In the November 2020 election, Biden roped in two-time senator and former California attorney Kamala Harris as a running mate, which earned him some extra points to begin with. Vice President Harris basked in the media spotlight she attracted initially, basically on account of her being the country’s first woman vice president. Harris and her team pushed for excessive visibility, little realising that such approach would only tire the public out. Even with only a heartbeat away from the presidency, there is not much to do for a vice-president, except to play a secondary role of the ceremonial brand.

Geraldine Anne Ferraro, journalist, politician, diplomat and attorney, who served in the House of Representatives from 1979 to1985, was the Democratic Party’s vice presidential nominee in 1984 as the running mate of Walter Mondale. However, Mondale lost to Ronald Reagan’s bid for a second term.
Nine elections later, Harris was tossed up for the vice-presidency, on a Democratic ticket. Biden was commended for the move. Voters, who found the Trump administration traumatic and chaotic, banked on Biden to correct the course on the domestic as well as foreign fronts. So far they are not impressed, as underscored by the poor public opinion survey ratings he has.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s public approval rating continues to be more than 70 per cent even after 22 years in power. His American counterpart Biden, barely a year in office, has an approval rating of 40 per cent. With barely 30 per cent of approval rating, Harris, too, has been consigned to enormous indifference. A newspaper’s comment on her performance—the “incredible disappearing vice president”— indicates her present position.
Crises create opportunities for demonstrating leadership qualities. And, indeed, Biden has more than a handful of big issues facing him. Progress on this front is yet to be visible, what with inflation reaching a 40-year record high.

Health frailties can strike any individual. But when it does in royal audience, a public figure suffers negative comments. Biden’s farted during his meeting with Camilla, the spouse of Prince Charles. The sound was too deep and long to feign that no embarrassment was caused. This did not go well with supporters who have been worried about the 79-year old president’s age and physical shape of late.

Newspaper columnist Paul Dallison commented on the lighter side of politics: “Clearly when you meet the Duchess of Cornwall, you’re supposed to fart. That’s allegedly what happened when Joe Biden met Camilla at the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow—with the US president doing a terrible job at reducing emissions.” Biden’s sense of focus and concentration has become an unnerving issue. He has not once but several times referred to his vice president as “President Harris”.

When polled, 51 per cent of white women without degrees said the 2020 presidential election was stolen, compared with 29 per cent of degree-holding white women. According to a poll by the Economist, 5 per cent of Democrats, 39 per cent of Independents and 77 per cent of Republicans believe Biden’s victory in 2020 was not legitimate. For that matter, 18 per cent of white women without college degrees think that Trump was “likely” to be reelected soon.

Here, were I to make such opinion, most of my compatriots would dismiss it as cranky, if not worse. Wonder how they would describe the American citizens who seriously question the “accidental” President Biden’s electoral credential but sound so optimistic about the defeated Trump. This comes against the ugly, cruel and violent images that emerged when Trump supporters went on the rampage on January 6 in protest against what they believed victory was stolen from Trump.
As of now, Trump cannot be discounted as yet. Senator Lindsey Graham the other week said: “If you want to be a Republican leader in the House or the Senate and you don’t have a working relationship with Trump, you cannot be effective.”

Sea change
The Democratic Party and its supporters try to put the blame for existing difficulties on Trump’s reckless march off the traditional track, which put tremendous pressure in the new occupant of the White House. They are dismayed by what they describe as the vain former president’s habit of telling lies without qualms. Repudiating the criticisms, at least a quarter of independent voters still believe that Trump’s victory was stolen. The situation is likely to leave a lasting impression on the voting public for quite some years.

Indeed, the single-term Trump presidency proved to be unprecedented in recent memory —vastly different from the line of presidents who made it to the top job after World War II. Supporters of Trump rallied and rioted when two weeks were left for the president-elect to be sworn in. This left a bad taste to the rest of the world considering the high claim Americans make regarding their democratic practices. The January 2021 incident is unlikely to fade out early as an aberration.

If a significant section of voters and a large number of Republican supporters continue nursing serious doubts about the November 2020 election, it would heighten deep-seated distrust among sections of the American people. That is a challenge the Biden administration has to confront and cope with during Biden’s remaining three years in office. Although Biden is most unlikely to seek a second term, prospects of his vice president and other Republican hopefuls in the 2024 elections could in good measure depend upon the outgoing president’s performance.

(Professor Kharel specialises in political communication.)